Concern 10
If Everything’s So Bad, Why Will This Time Be Any Different?
In this section, we explore the feelings of despondence many of us have experienced. We’ve seen this before. How is this time different? We also examine the victories that protestors have already won across the United States, and how they have galvanized a global movement against injustice and in solidarity with Black American protests.
01
Remember, No One Is Coming To Save Us
By Roxanne Gay,
The New York Times (May 20, 2020)
This article explores the emotional experience of many Black people leading up to these recent protests. Feelings of utter hopelessness, isolation, and abandonment that permeate the Black psyche in the United States, as white Americans push to “get back to normal” and Black Americans die in the process.
“Like many Black people, I am furious and fed up, but that doesn’t matter at all.”
“I write similar things about different Black lives lost over and over and over. I tell myself I am done with this subject. Then something so horrific happens that I know I must say something, even though I know that the people who truly need to be moved are immovable.”
“Some white people act as if there are two sides to racism, as if racists are people we need to reason with. They fret over the destruction of property and want everyone to just get along. They struggle to understand why Black people are rioting but offer no alternatives about what people should do about a lifetime of rage, disempowerment and injustice.”
“We will live with the knowledge that a hashtag is not a vaccine for white supremacy. We live with the knowledge that, still, no one is coming to save us. The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For Black people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free.”
02
As a Black Mother, I Ask: Can We Actually Change for Good This Time
By Adrienne Farr,
Parents.com (June 4, 2020)
This article provides a deeply personal perspective of being a Black mother and raising a Black child in America and the hope and initial change that the author sees being born from these protests.
“As tragic and horrific as his death is, it seems it will not be in vain. I see police breaking the blue wall of silence as they support protestors, while some governors and mayors balk at the injustice and demand law enforcement reform. I feel optimistic and grateful that so many people are answering the call to action. But then I wonder. When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, didn’t my ancestors feel hope, joy, and optimism? Yet the war would continue for another two years and even after the ratification of the 13th amendment, there were decades of lynchings, mass murder, and endless other racist atrocities.”
“For the first time in my life, this doesn’t feel like a false alarm. We’ve been heard. We matter. That’s all we’ve been saying—We matter. I am brought to tears by the enormity of the shift I feel the world leaning into. There is a cleansing, a collective consciousness that is washing away the ills that don’t serve us. This year has birthed gigantic waves of grief and death, but what is the lesson the teacher is screaming at us to learn through the pandemic, the hate, and the murders? I believe it’s to recognize the value of every person and to love, help, and support each other. We need each other.”
03
America, This Is Your Chance
By Michelle Alexander, The New York Times (June 8, 2020)
In this piece Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, explains why as democracy hangs in the balance, and as we may be on the verge of a new Civil War, the struggle raging on in the streets around us is a struggle for the soul of the country and why we all have a duty to take part.
“Our democracy hangs in the balance. This is not an overstatement.”
“We find ourselves here for the same reasons a civil war tore our nation apart more than 100 years ago: Too many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic system. If we do not learn the lessons of history and choose a radically different path forward, we may lose our last chance at creating a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy.”
“Our nation suddenly caught a glimpse of itself in the mirror and people of all races poured into the streets to say ‘no more.’”
“Only by pausing long enough to study the cycles of oppression and resistance does it become clear that simply being a good person or not wishing Black people any harm is not sufficient. Nor is voting for Democrats or diversifying police forces. In fact, those efforts have not made much of a dent in ending abusive policing or mass incarceration.”
“Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love. In recent days, we’ve seen what it looks like when people of all races, ethnicities, genders and backgrounds rise up together, standing in solidarity for justice, protesting, marching and singing together, even as SWAT teams and tanks roll in. We’ve seen our faces in another American mirror — a reflection of the best of who we are and what we can become. These images may not have dominated the media coverage, but I’ve glimpsed in a foggy mirror scenes of a beautiful, courageous nation struggling to be born.”
04
The Summer of 2020 Is Going to Be Long, Violent, and Necessary
By Jamilah King, Mother Jones (June 1, 2020)
The violent deaths of Black people at the hands of the police force throughout the beginning of 2020 have fueled rage throughout the United States. Couple this with the solitude and soaring death rates of the coronavirus pandemic, and people are ready to act.
“Protesters have taken to the streets in dozens of American cities. It’s a swelling of outrage and, thanks largely to militarized police forces, violence not seen in the United States since 1968”
“To be human now is to be isolated, uncertain, and scared. It’s no wonder that so many people have taken to the streets. Outrage is a unifying emotion. It’s intimate and collective.”
“Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: the million other straws underneath it.”
“Buildings will burn and people will die because people have been dying—in their homes, at local hospitals, and in detention centers. It would be naive and downright dangerous to expect anything different.”
06
The Fire This Time: Race at Boiling Point
Angela Y. Davis, Herman Gray, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Josh Kun, YouTube [1:26:17] (June 5, 2020)
A play on activist and author James Baldwin’s 1963 seminal text The Fire Next Time, prominent scholars and activists come together in a wide-ranging conversation emerging out of the national and international protests in response to yet another incident of anti-Black police violence. These leading critical thinkers engage questions about intersectional and international struggle, the militarization of the border, racial capitalism, the feminist dimension of new social justice movements, the unsustainability of the nation-state, the power of the arts as a rallying force for imagining and sustaining solidarities, and much more. This is a great holistic overview of this moment with a hopeful consideration of the black feminist dimensions and wide-ranging solidarities the movement is building.
So What Have These Protests Achieved?
Quite a lot… click to find out.